NASA administrator Michael Griffin told an audience at the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin that he could not serve a president who did not want to carry on with the Constellation programme
Indicating that he did not expect to serve the next administration, Griffin explained that as a presidential appointee it was customary for someone in such a position to hand in their resignation and that those resignations were rarely rejected
If Senator John McCain wins though maybe that would be less of a problem as he appears to be more pro-Constellation
Griffin declined to be drawn on commenting on the US presidential campaign but he did say that he was not sure which of the two candidates [John McCain or Barack Obama] would be better for NASA
During his speech at the beginning of the session he talked about the problems NASA has had with administrations changing funding, cutting programmes, undermining the ability of the agency to focus on the longer term on capabilities that would see more space exploration
In answering a question from a child about the significance of a manned Mars mission Griffin described such an endeavour as on a "different philosophical plane" to the exploration of the Moon and other NASA projects
A former senior member of the Mars Society Griffin very probably named his Constellation programme's Ares rockets after the boosters in his fellow Mars Society member and founder of that organisation, Bob Zubrin's book "The Case for Mars"
on October 29, 2008 2:54 PM | Reply
If some president thinks that space travel is a luxury that doesn't do any good to alleviate man from poverty, hunger and sickness, nothing will come of it. Perhaps he should rather be looking at the expenses made by sending troops overseas instead. Obama is the most serious threat to manned space exploration up till now. During his administration Constellation will almost certainly be downgraded to a LEO instrument only by which the space station can be served. There are a lot of new ideas but funding is slack and will possible dry up all together: what's the use. The moon seems more distant than 40 years ago. And Mars, well... Maybe I'm a misanthropist.